As for the COMEX that's a much bigger game of course with very big players that can be define by some of the adjectives u use i have no doubt . It's also been more and more obvious lately that some ugly games are being played , but as i said here before there's no such thing as a free or open market everybody from the corner store to the private hedge funds are trying to control every aspect of the market there in, as much as they can, and cheating is a most common affair.

I've long felt that the debate between free market advocates and central planners was a false dichotomy.

First, in order to even have a market of meaningful scale, some degree of central planning is necessary. At its most basic level, this consists of the ability to defend one's domain from external threat, which at minimum implies a military and the economic means to support it. Try and do that without a plan.

Second, to have the maximum degree of free participation, a market must have strict controls that prevent cheating, starting with honest weights and measures (including money) defined by some agency with the capacity for enforcement. Again, some degree of central control is required.

So for me, the question is not free vs. planned, but:

- what mechanisms must we create that prevent one or another group of private interests usurping economic control to the detriment of the general good?

- how do we arrive at the correct ratio between central planning and laissez-faire, given that we live in a dynamic environment where all possible outcomes cannot be predicted?

At the root of the problem is human nature, which (if not by definition then by practice) tends to pursue private, short term interest, often at the expense of the general good.

I don't claim to have the answer, but let's at least start asking the right questions. This is where the debate should be focused: on asking meaningful questions that hold the potential for solutions to the apparent contradiction between public and private good.

A useful way to approach the problem is from the standpoint of game theory, with special attention to "The Prisoner's Dilemma' and Douglas Hofstadter's definition of "superrationality."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisone...

If we encourage people to start thinking in these terms then perhaps it will spill over into their political and economic lives, and provide them with an alternative to the mindless polemics which dominate the current debate.

ebear